Posted in space, transportation
The International Space Station (ISS) will be visible to the naked eye in several areas in the country starting tonight!
According to the NASA website, the space station looks like “an airplane or a very bright star moving across the sky” and moves considerably faster than a typical airplane.
Imagine something similar to the Great Depression of 1929 hitting the world, but this time it never ends.
Economic modelling suggests this is the reality facing us if we continue emitting greenhouse gases and allowing temperatures to rise unabated.
Economists have largely underestimated the global economic damages from climate change, partly as a result of averaging these effects across countries and regions, but also because the likely behaviour of producers and consumers in a climate change future isn’t usually taken into consideration in climate modelling.
Posted in futurism
At the time of writing, 436 people have died following an earthquake in the Indonesian island of Lombok. A further 2,500 people have been hospitalised with serious injuries and over 270,000 people have been displaced.
Earthquakes are one of the deadliest natural disasters, accounting for just 7.5% of such events between 1994 and 2013 but causing 37% of deaths. And, as with all natural disasters, it isn’t the countries that suffer the most earthquakes that see the biggest losses. Instead, the number of people who die in an earthquake is related to how developed the country is.
In Lombok, as in Nepal in 2015, many deaths were caused by the widespread collapse of local rickety houses incapable of withstanding the numerous aftershocks. More generally, low quality buildings and inadequate town planning are the two main reasons why seismic events are more destructive in developing countries.
In the quest for clean alternative energy sources, hydrogen is a favorite. It releases a lot of energy when burned—with a bonus: The major byproduct of burning hydrogen is pure water.
The big obstacle has been getting pure hydrogen in sufficient quantity to burn. So scientists are studying hydrogen evolution reactions, or HERs, a type of water-splitting technology in which electrodes, covered with catalytic materials, are inserted into water and charged with electricity. The interaction of the electricity, the catalysts and the water produce hydrogen gas—a clean fuel—and clean, breathable oxygen.
Alas, there is a problem: At present, electrodes must be coated with precious, expensive metals, most notably platinum.
‚Every day there are roughly 386,000 new mouths to feed, and in that same 24 hours, scientists estimate between one and 100 species will go extinct. That’s it. Lost forever.
To deal with the biodiversity crisis we need to find a way to give nature more space—habitat loss is a key factor driving these extinctions. But how would this affect our food supplies?
New research, published in Nature Sustainability, found it could mean we lose a lot of food —but exactly how much really depends on how we choose to give nature that space. Doing it right could mean rethinking how we do agriculture and conservation altogether.
An interview with Didier Coeurnelle from the Healthy Life Extension Society.
As you might remember, we have recently posted about the Longevity Film Competition, an initiative by HEALES, ILA, and the SENS Research Foundation that encourages supporters of healthy life extension to produce a short film to popularize the subject.
Didier Coeurnelle is a jurist and the co-chair of HEALES, the Healthy Life Extension Society promoting life extension in Europe, as well as a long-standing member of social and environmental movements.
We got in touch with Didier, who serves as co-director of the competition, to ask him about the initiative and to share his thoughts on advocacy in general.
https://www.undoing-aging.org/videos/vera-gorbunova-presenti…aging-2018
Btw: the facebook event page for Undoing Aging 2019 is already up fb.com/events/2044104465916196/
The implications are mind-boggling, oh yes.
Check out what MIT media lab does using bone conduction technology.
#technology #future #internet #biotechnology #communication #immersiveleaks
“We are not going to fly until we are ready to fly safely,” said SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell at the event Monday. “We need to hit all the boxes and do everything we need to do to take astronauts from U.S. soil as often as NASA will let us.“After SpaceX successfully completes Demo-2, NASA will certify the spacecraft and systems for regular crewed launches to the ISS, with astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover flying the first operational mission.
Even with all the safety precautions and testing, however, the astronauts remain aware that space flight is extremely hazardous.“The only thing I’m afraid of,” said Glover, who is married and has four daughters, “is not coming home to my family.”
